Gave this a good try, but it wasn't engaging me. The situation was peculiar, but not well enough explained. Two British airmen have been taken captive, ostensibly for their own safety, by a German soldier who keeps them confined in a basement for years, long after WWII has ended. They are not physically or psychologically abused, but they have no idea that the war is over. They each develop their own ways of coping with their isolation. Their jailer's motivation is never explained, at least up to the point where I chucked it. The dialog isn't natural; it feels more like a stage play than a novel. I couldn't stick to it long enough to get to the promised "turning of the tables".

"Chained-up in a Nazi cellar for seven years, the two airmen had no idea the war was long over -- even after they escaped!" Psychological thriller, focuses on the adaptations of the two British airmen who are kept to fill the pathological needs of a sick little man. I kept thinking as I read the book that it was almost stage-ready, the dialogue read like a play, and discovered only after I finished that the author was an actor and playwright. ( )